Niobium complexes Subject

Niobium V) reacts with thiocyanate in HCl solutions to form a yellow complex, which has been a basis of determining Nb. The niobium is determined spectrophotometrically either after extraction of the complex [34-36] or in an aqueous acetone medium. The sensitivities in both cases are similar, but the extraction method is less subject to interference by other metals. Diethyl ether is commonly used as the solvent, but ketones, esters, and higher alcohols are also suitable. 

Tunnelling up, on the other hand, there is the objection that chemistry as a subject is overall too complex for reductionism where quantum chemistry cannot predict accurately real world phenomena—take, for example, the chemical similarity of vanadium and niobium which have different electronic structures [27, 29]. The same argument can be made against simulations that rely on interatomic potentials rather than electronic structure calculations in either case the simulation will be too abstracted, too reduced from reality, to be useful. 

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